QuickTime Pro for encoding H.264?

[Dorian Gray]

Hello AppleNova,

Yesterday I made a quick and dirty comparison of some video codecs including 3ivx, DivX, Xvid, ffmpeg, Apple's Simple Profile MPEG-4 implementation, and the new x264 AVC codec. At the fairly low bit-rates I'm most interested in (for emailing video content), x264 looks extremely promising, but still shows signs of being a new product: for example, very dark frames are rendered with noticeable horizontal banding, and new scenes take several frames to 'dial in' and stabilise. But the level of detail and absence of blocking is astonishing, so I'm interested in finding out more about AVC codecs.

I'm running OS 10.3.9, and I've noticed that the free QuickTime Player 7 allows iMovie 4 (and other apps) to export H.264 video via the system-wide QuickTime export architecture. I fired up iMovie tonight, and to my surprise it converts all imported clips into DV format before anything can be done with the content (including simply exporting). This is not ideal for my purposes, as it wastes time and uses excessive disk space (~200 MB/min). The resizing options also look very limited.

Sorenson Squeeze 4 (http://www.sorensonstore.com/product_info.php?url=http://www.sorensonstore.com/products/sq4csmac.html) looks like a sweet application (Warning! WMV file! (http://www.classondemand.net/ClassOnDemand/IMAGES/media/sq4-QuickTime.wmv)), but at a list price of US $449 for the Compression Suite ($199 for the MPEG-4 version) it's far too rich for my blood.

So QuickTime Pro at £20 looks more likely, despite my grave doubts about Apple's media player charging strategy. But I have a few questions about it:

1) By what mechanism does Apple restrict the usage of the Pro key? In other words, what happens if I want to reinstall software, my disk crashes, I upgrade to Tiger, or I want to get rid of my computer but keep QuickTime Pro?

2) Does a Pro license last until the next major upgrade, i.e. QT 8 in this case?

3) Can I export anything QT can play to any format for which I have a QT codec?

4) How good is Apple's H.264 codec compared to x264 or indeed Sorenson's AVC?

5) As the 3ivx codec replaces QuickTime's MPEG-4 decoding implementation, should I uninstall this before getting a Pro key, and if so, is it safe to install it again afterwards?

6) To what extent does the MPEG-2 Playback Component support audio? Seems very confusing from the Apple website. Has anyone used this?

Hope someone with QuickTime Pro can help me out with any of the above, or even tell me what I should really be using (heard something about Nero?). And sorry for the long first post!

[Brad]

Welcome to AppleNova! :) It's actually quite refreshing to see a newcomer with intelligent, well-thought questions like this in his (her?) first post.

1. It's a simple software key, nothing fancy. It doesn't use anything devious like Microsoft's online software activation system. As long as you keep the number, you'll be able to reenter it on the next computer. To remove it, simply delete the text from the fields in the registration window.

2. Generally, yes. The 4.x keys also worked in 5.x, but 6.0 and 7.0 both required new keys.

3. Short answer: yes, everything. Long answer: almost everything. QuickTime doesn't export muxed MPEG-1 streams very well. It'll export the video but seems to lose the audio. Also, there are some movie trailers that are DRM-protected to prevent saving and exporting. I don't know how easy/difficult it is to get around that; I've never really tried.

4. I don't think anyone has done a thorough comparison of these three yet. I haven't even seen any content encoded by Sorenson yet. Personally, I'm hoping 3ivx will come out with a killer implementation like it did for MPEG-4.

5. Not necessary. The pro key simply unlocks certain features in the QuickTime Player application. It doesn't matter what extra components you do or don't have.

6. I haven't used the MPEG-2 additions.

[Gargoyle]

Some peeps, including me, made some sample videos with a few different codecs here (http://forums.applenova.com/showthread.php?t=6892&highlight=h264)

Welcome to AN. :D

[Dorian Gray]

Thanks for the helpful replies. That pretty much clears up any doubts I had. I'll get a Pro license later on today.

Interesting that some people on that H.264 thread were questioning the hype surrounding the new codec. In my quick comparisons there really wasn't much room for debate (with the exception of the x264 problems I mentioned above). I'm very intrigued by this new codec. It's a pity we didn't have this around five years ago when bandwidth limitations were even tighter than they are today.